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Floor Speech

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Mr. MORENO. Mr. President, I would like to continue exactly the themes my colleague from Vermont brought up, except I think, before we talk about artificial intelligence, we should talk about natural intelligence. It absolutely goes against natural intelligence for us to sit here in this Chamber knowing that we have 260,000 working American families, who work for our government, who are doing their job and not getting paid. That, to me, is the crisis we should be talking about.

And, yes, I agree with my colleague from Vermont. We should not be worried about Mr. Musk or any of the other billionaires going hungry. I worry about our TSA agents going hungry. I worry about our Coast Guard people going hungry. I worry about the people at FEMA going hungry.

And yet, with total disregard for over a quarter of a million families, we sit in this Chamber, and we are getting paid. Everybody here is getting paid, and yet they are not.

And I applaud my colleague from Vermont, who is walking out of the floor, for caring about working Americans.

Why don't we care about them? Why don't we fund DHS now? Why don't we worry about those families who, by the way, according to the last Secretary of Homeland Security--the last one said--and I am going to quote here:

The average [TSA agent] lives paycheck-to-paycheck.

We have taken away three paychecks. Three paychecks we have taken away from them.

If there was ever a time we needed to fund [DHS], it's . . . now.

This is not a Republican Secretary saying that. It is a Democrat Secretary of Homeland Security saying that.

I don't understand how, in a leadership role--which is what we are here in the U.S. Senate--we would allow the suffering of 260,000 families to go with this much contempt and, instead, fund DHS in its entirety. Allow those families to get paid.

Mr. President, you were a business guy like I was. Could you ever look at yourself in the mirror when you owned your businesses and know, because of your actions, the people who worked for you weren't getting paid and were suffering? It is impossible.

I remember when I started my first business. I felt the weight of success because I had to take care of my family. But for those early families, for that first business that I bought, every day I walked in, I felt this incredible responsibility. Man, if I made bad decisions, if I make a bad decision today, people will go hungry who work for me. And that drove me to succeed.

We are totally disconnected. We sit here in this Chamber. It doesn't even touch any of us, and I think that is a disgrace. I think we should, very simply, do what has always been done before we became this hyperpartisan Chamber: We fund the government responsibly. And then, if we have policy disagreements, we can sit down.

By the way, right now, just down this hallway--just down this hallway--there are Democrat colleagues and Republican colleagues of good faith sitting down to negotiate differences to get the Department of Homeland Security funded.

We have American citizens that are paying taxes to fund the government to work that is not working.

I know that sometimes pleading with my colleagues to have some level of humanity is ineffective because, quite frankly, maybe this place takes a little humanity away from you. Maybe you don't see how these decisions affect many, many people.

So with that, Mr. President, I am going to ask a very, very, very simple request--very simple.

I am going to ask unanimous consent that this body, the U.S. Senate, proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 156, H.R. 4553; I further ask that the substitute amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

What this means in English, to the person who may be watching, is this funds the entire Department of Homeland Security for 2 weeks. Everybody gets paid up to date. We get the Department open, and then let the work that is being done now proceed. I ask that that happen.

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Mr. MORENO. Mr. President, I am not sure what I just heard because I just offered to fund TSA. I just offered to fund the Coast Guard, FEMA, Customs and Border Patrol, Secret Service, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers, USCIS, Homeland Security Investigations. Let's do it for 2 weeks. Let's do that for 2 weeks.

Down the hall--down the hall--there are Senators of good faith that are getting together to end this political charade.

So, to my colleague, I will yield the floor for a simple question: Why would you want to fund just TSA and not the Coast Guard? Not, for example, in your State, the American Immigration Council, which deals with 102,700 undocumented immigrants in Michigan--why wouldn't you want enforcement around that? Why wouldn't you want to fund the Department that allows people like me, who, when I was 18 years old, applied for citizenship? Why wouldn't we want to fund 3,300 employees--some of them in your State--that actually process legal immigrants? Why wouldn't we fund that? Why wouldn't we fund 7,000 special agents that are there to stop transnational criminals? Why wouldn't we fund 200 employees that fund--and you were a CIA agent--that fund biological and nuclear threat prevention? Why wouldn't we do that? Why wouldn't we fund 60,000 employees at Customs?

You care a lot about the bridge that was hopefully due to be opened from Canada. You need Border Patrol agents there. You need Customs there. Why wouldn't we fund that?

Why wouldn't we do that for 2 weeks--2 weeks--and then we can get together. Why wouldn't we do that?

Why just fund one narrow slice of the Department of Homeland Security? I am just curious why you would do that.

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Mr. MORENO. Will you yield for a question?

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Mr. MORENO. Look, I appreciate--and I know you are a person of good character, by the way. I genuinely believe that. But that is not what you are asking for. You are asking to fund just TSA, meaning the question is this: Why would we use 260,000 people and their families as pawns in a negotiation? Why wouldn't we pay all those people?

So will you consider adding a bill that I have put together that says that as long as we haven't fully funded the government, we get money taken out of our paychecks--not held in suspension, but we actually would lose compensation, about $500 a day, every day that goes by where we haven't fully funded the government. Would you consider adding that to your resolution?

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Mr. MORENO. You have the floor.

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Mr. MORENO. So Homeland Investigations is part of ICE. There are 7,000 special agents that work for ICE that stop transnational criminals. You are not suggesting that we not fund them, are you?

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Mr. MORENO. One more question, with your permission.

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Mr. MORENO. So nobody on your side has agreed to fund USCIS. You have not suggested that. USCIS is an independent part of the Department of Homeland Security.

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Mr. MORENO. That has not been suggested by any Democrat.

I appreciate that you are.

Nobody has agreed to fund the bioweapons of mass destruction Agency-- not been suggested.

You have specifically--not you personally--the Democrat Senators have specifically said they do not want to fund Customs, which you understand really well--really well--what Customs means--and Border Protection.

These Agencies that are listed on this board--there has been no movement among Democrats to fund these, and this is why my point is the same.

I am not suggesting to my colleague from Michigan at all that we permanently fund this forever. What I am saying is 2 weeks. Let's reopen the Department of Homeland Security for 2 weeks. Let's let people of good faith--you and I--look, we agree on what you said. Let's take our paychecks away. Let's prevent us from flying home. Let's make us--I will use your words--keep our butts here until we get this done, if that means today, tomorrow, Saturday, Sunday. We could play pickleball in between; that would be fantastic, OK? But we don't leave. If that means right through Easter, by the way, we do not leave this Chamber, and we lose pay every day that goes by until we have funded the whole thing, because we can work it out. We can work this out.

But I look at some of your colleagues who said they are serene as to where we are on this. I don't think there are 260,000 families that are serene about this, and I don't think you are either.

So, again, I would just ask that you amend your resolution to say let's fund the entire Department for 2 weeks. We don't want to defund ICE. I am not hearing you say that. I hear some of your other colleagues say that. But we are not looking to defund ICE, and we are certainly not going to stop Homeland Investigations.

Let's fund the whole thing for 2 weeks. Let's get the American people to understand we can get things done. Let's absolutely not leave-- forget DC; let's not leave this Chamber, the Capitol, until we get this done.

That is my ask. That is my plea.

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Mr. MORENO. Reserving my right to object, just to be clear on what was just proposed, what was just proposed is to fund just TSA, nothing else.

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Mr. MORENO. Nothing else.

And what is wrong with that--in case you didn't hear the peanut gallery, what is wrong with that is that there are hundreds of thousands of other government employees who, through no fault of their own--they did nothing wrong. They didn't have anything to do with what happened in Minneapolis, had no role in that whatsoever. They go to work every day, doing the best they can to keep us safe.

Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I attended a dignified transfer ceremony in Dover. And I am thinking to myself, these three Ohioans--what did they die for? They died to preserve freedom for us. They didn't ask any questions. They went willingly. They volunteered.

Can we honor their sacrifice by saying: Do the right thing. Fund the Department of Homeland Security for 2 weeks. Senators stay here without pay--not held pay, docked pay--because we haven't done our job. Article I--we are the power of the purse.

So I would ask one last time before concluding this, can I get my colleague from Michigan, who is a good person, to agree to amend her proposal to fund the entire Department of Homeland Security for 2 weeks and then force every Senator--and I think that she has the influence to convince her colleagues--to stay here without pay until this gets done.

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Mr. MORENO. Yes.

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Mr. MORENO. I, with a broken heart, object. And we did not do the right thing for the American people today, and it is a shame. Politics got in the way of helping working Americans. It is a disgrace.

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